| Unearthing of some objects, believed to be Stone Age tools,
during excavation of a tank at a village nearby, has prompted the
Visva Bharati University's archaeology department to seek
assistance of the Archaeological Survey of India to unravel the
mystery. |
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| "The scientific excavation is likely to throw new light on
the possible existence of stone age people in this part of
Bengal," sources in the university's archaeology department
said. |
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| They said that the tools "bear similarity with those used
by the Middle Paleolithic people some 40,000 years ago". |
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| Archaeology department head Subrata Chakraborty said that some
moulded iron substances, circular in shape, were also found during
excavation of the tank at Sekhampur village, near this
sub-divisional town of West Bengal's Birbhum district. |
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| All these came to light last month when excavators, while
carving out a tank from a water pool, came across the artefacts
"believed to be stone age tools". |
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| The artefacts consist of borers, scrapers and tools, which,
according to the Visva-Bharati archaeologists, bear 'testimony' to
the tools used in the Stone Age. |
| |
| Chakraborty told PTI here that his department had examined the
tools, but could not come to any conclusion about the period
pending detailed inquiry by the ASI. |
| |
| "After finding the specimens collected during excavation,
we believe these have the features of Middle Paleolithic
period," he said, suggesting wider excavation of the tank. |
| |
| Chakraborty said after he had written a letter to the state's
higher education minister Satyasadhan Chakraborty, which was later
forwarded to the chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, state
government sent a team of experts from state archaeological
department to visit the site. |
| |
| "However, report of that team is still awaited", he
added. |
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| Meanwhile, the district administration has taken steps to ensure
that there is no further digging of the tank and, as such, the
entire area has been cordoned off to ward off any undesirable
elements from nearing it. ASI sources in Kolkata were not
available for comment on any new archaeological find in Birbhum. |
